


A precious little porcelain thing

by shittershutter



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 14:18:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6287962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shittershutter/pseuds/shittershutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Although he doesn’t want to drift on it, Daryl returns to the forest, into Carol’s arms many months ago when he doesn’t believe her when she tells him: “One day it just might be over.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A precious little porcelain thing

**Author's Note:**

> The story includes a few flashbacks of underage Daryl/Merle which by definition include incest and sexual abuse. As a result of those there are also mentions of a severe psychological trauma and erectile dysfunction. So be warned about that. 
> 
> Rick comes to make it slightly better, though. 
> 
>  
> 
> It's also still unbetad and I'm sorry.

He goes deeper into the woods to howl for Merle when the moon’s full, when the wind in the branches is strong enough to conceal the sound of him losing it.

He pushes his face against the moss, flush, no room for a sound to escape, and weeps, howls and cries for the motherfucker until everything hurts until he’s lost his voice and gained an explosive pain inside the skull.

When he raises his flushed face, Carol is there, against the trunk, watching him. Of course, she is. 

The moon’s bright enough to illuminate her face with complete understanding plastered across it. It terrifies him — that phantom perspective of someone understanding him. No one should be subjected to that amount of shit to shovel through to gain the unique perspective into Daryl Dixon’s mind. 

She wraps her hands around him, and he’s vibrating hard enough with the aftershocks to make them both tremble.

He tells her about the shallow grave he buried Merle in — couldn’t just leave him to be picked apart. Cleaned the blood from the wound, wiped it from around the mouth. Cried some more, holding his brother against his chest, pretty much like she’s holding him now. But even as he watched that sharp, angry face being eaten by the damp cold ground, getting into the hollowed space around Merle’s eyes first, then to his cheeks, between his lips, too, Daryl was no fool, he knew Merle wasn’t really going anywhere. 

Roles reversed, the memory throws him back in time, to the rusty mattress in his room where Merle is hovering above him, kissing the flowing tears off his face. He hurts him so much that first time. And it’s not like Daryl’s unfamiliar with excruciating physical pain at that point, it’s not like Merle’s muscles don’t buzz with restraint to show his virgin ass some mercy, but he swears to himself that day he’s done with fucking once and for all.

Then, the moment Merle pulls out he wants him back, just to be called good, just to be looked at like he’s a precious little porcelain thing. 

His conviction remains true since — he’s done with fucking — unless it’s Merle who’s doing it. 

To Carol’s credit, her hand in his hair never stills. 

It’s not a conscious decision he ever makes, it just settles in his brain, like a verdict, that only Merle touches him in that way. In any way, for the matter. It’s only Merle who can give him love and occasionally gonorrhea — he always blames the later on Daryl but fully admits having the former. Daryl lives for those rare admissions.

“I know it’s fucked up,” he breathes into her shoulder. It’s important to him that she gets it. He’s not one of those Dr. Phil’s “at least I know he loves me” people, now that’ll be pathetic. 

Knowing doesn’t liberate him from the truth that he can’t even get it up for anyone but his brother.

“I loved him so much, ” Daryl rasps. It tears him apart, the pain. The horror of it, too. “Hated him all the same.” 

Then the breathless hiccups follow. Through their cannonade, he can hear birds waking up. Through the blur, he can see the sky just above the trees getting lighter. 

+++

When Rick Grimes comes into his personal space with his gentle eyes and even gentler hands, everything goes down just like Daryl knew it would. 

But the night when he got his snot all over Carol’s clothes comes in handy — he’s got the ugly words out once, now he only has to repeat them. 

There’s no easy way to go down the “it’s not you, it’s me” road, especially if fucking your brother since the age of 15 is down the path, but the road’s never been easy for Daryl Dixon. 

Without all the sobbing he almost sounds chill about it to himself. 

Rick does look like he was punched in the face for a moment or two, but to his credit there are no pointless questions to follow, no disgust he expects but doesn’t care about anymore — he just tightens his arm around Daryl again, like nothing happened, and for a long moment it really feels like nothing did. 

“I want to keep trying,” Rick says with that brutal honesty that always leaves him defenseless. “Is it okay with you?”

Daryl just nods. They lie, struggling to fit into the small bed inside the nameless night shelter house, and Rick is mouthing along Daryl’s bloody knuckles, trying to unclench the tight grip the man has on himself. 

He withdraws the hand from Daryl’s pants, and Daryl’s face burns as he feels another’s man hard dick against his hip while he lies so close, right fucking there, rigid and useless with his dead brother’s laughter roaring in his head. 

+++

Rick seems to be down with dying from prostate cancer in the middle of the apocalypse because there’s no way a male mammal can survive that long with the balls as blue as his without any health risks. 

Daryl threatens him with kicking his ass and other vague violence, but what really works is a promise to tackle him down and suck him off in public. That gets a certain dick down a certain throat long before lunchtime.

Rick’s smart about his plan with trying shit, though. Without pushing it, he gets Daryl hooked on making out first — something Daryl couldn’t imagine being the part of the act. 

And it feels nice, mentally. He blushes and pants his way through, confused by the softness of it. If Merle was ever tender with him, it’d be more like a glitch in his system. He’d look at his hand stroking Daryl’s hair like it was doing shit it wasn’t supposed to, like he’d have to look through the manual to get that shit fixed, what the hell. 

Then they get to the next stage, and Merle’s ranting inside Daryl’s head intensifies tenfold. Sometimes, if he really tunes in and concentrates on the man he’s with presently, right now, he’s able to shut his brother up. It feels amazingly good. He can almost imagine himself being a regular person, too, sharing an intimate moment with his partner behind the closed door of the private bedroom.

It doesn’t last long because they get naked at some point, and he finds his way back into that good old loop again. The one that makes him scared of getting scared and have nothing happen again.

Stuck inside the ever-decaying dynamics of the new world, he loses the need to be constantly inside his head, though. So he doesn’t notice when that loop starts to get eroded at the edges, just like the landscape around. 

He cleans his knives one night, a task that never fails to calm him down, and lets his mind wander. He thinks about Rick’s hands when they touch his skin, soothing and ticklish a little, like he’s a precious little porcelain thing, all shiny and unscratched.

He looks down, and he’s hard, hard in his pants just like that. 

He motions Rick to leave the group near the campfire and come closer, and instead of spooking the moment with words he just takes the that same hand and pushes it into his crotch. 

The look on the other man’s face is priceless, the whites of his eyes comically huge in the pale moonlight. With irresponsibility Rick Grimes never seemed to display, before he grabs his hand and drags him through the bushes, away from the prying eyes.

“What were you thinking about when…?” 

“You,” Daryl shrugs and kisses him first. 

It doesn’t last — Merle shows up, relinking all the old demonic thoughts inside his brain, and as the wiring between those thoughts starts to sparkle, the damn thing flags again. But he sucks Rick off still, and they grin like loons when they return to the group. 

There are not many things to feel hopeful about around them, but they’ve just found a good one. 

+++

The hope probably inspires Rick to go fully in the next time they get a proper bed and a locking door. 

Daryl still can feel the wave of panic and disgust rising, his muscles going rigid so quickly, so readily, but Rick’s there to save him. He talks to him a lot, never shuts up, in fact, calling his name, telling him how hot, how beautiful he is, and it takes Daryl some time to realize it’s Rick’s way to constantly remind him he’s not with Merle. 

He’s on his back, too, which was never Merle’s way, not since their first few times — Merle would put him on his fours like the bitch that he was. 

He can stare at Rick above him as the man strokes his chest with one hand and massages the skin behind his balls with the other. 

Daryl’s half hard, and it’s Rick’s doing: the second he goes into the loop of fearing the fear, Rick can sense it. He leans down and kisses him or talks to him, or runs his hands along his body, distracting him, chasing the demons away. 

They go the furthest today. He’s slick with, like, proper stuff, the pharmacy stuff Rick sold his soul to get, and it’s a big luxury in the new world — to use a thing exactly for what it was made for. 

The intrusion is not an unfamiliar feeling, the care it’s done with is. It’s the kind of touch Daryl can’t mistake for Merle’s. And Rick looks up, too, every other second, even though Daryl can’t reflect the gesture, he appreciates it.

Daryl doesn’t close his eyes. The second he does, he knows what face he’ll see there. He can’t look at Rick either, so he keeps his gaze just above Rick’s shoulder which is good enough. The fluff of the man’s hair gets into the field of vision, and it’s not Merle’s hair — so it does the trick. 

He lets out an “Ah!” when the finger breaches him. Merle barks with laughter between his temples at how pathetic his little bitch boy sounds, and Daryl shakes his head angry, trying to get him out. 

He can feel the concerned eyes on him and now he’s forced to look to put his partner at ease. He squeezes the forearm of the hand that is working him open and holds on tight. 

Rick gets the second finger in, his other hand pulling gently at the hair above Daryl’s dick, stroking his lower stomach. As he does, he hits something good inside, the feeling almost forgotten — Merle did good things for him, but he wouldn’t go out of his way too much. 

Daryl responds with a hiss, his pelvis rises to meet the sensation. Rick smiles then, finally, proudly, and proceeds to assault the spot inside the other man’s body with precision and accuracy he’s respected for.

Daryl’s fingers around his hand turn into claws, and he stares — really stares now — into the other’s man face which is so open and loving that it makes his chest ache. 

“You look kind of excited. It’s a good look on you.”

“Shuddup, Grimes.” His hips are fucking themselves now onto the fingers, meeting each movement with their own. He doesn’t realize that he’s humming along with motion.

Rick looks down — which is a brave move since staring down Daryl’s flaccid dick if off limits — it tends to kill the mood and send Daryl down the shame and horror spiral. Except the dick in question is not flaccid at all. 

Rick smirks, it’s a honest-to-god dirty smirk, and before Daryl manages to react, he leans down and presses his mouth to the length. 

The dedication this presumably sort of straight man would spend on sucking on Daryl’s limp dick has melted his heart more than once, but now he’s finally got real something to work with. 

He sighs blissfully and runs his lips along the length, root to head, leaving traces of saliva everywhere, and he’s greedy about it, too, looking and sounding like it’s all he ever wanted to shove into his mouth. 

He swallows Daryl down, his other hand still fucking him, the same rhythm, the one that was efficient, the one that worked, and Daryl moans now like he never heard himself moan before. 

And fucking Merle has nothing to say. His little bitch of a brother has his hand in another man’s hair, fucking his mouth — all the jokes writing themselves — and he’s silent for once. 

Daryl doesn’t think about his brother when he comes. 

He doesn’t think at all, focused on Rick’s eyes looking up at him, while his mouth and his hand do all the dirty work, and he’d warn the man, but he doesn’t even register the signs, doesn’t recognize them. And then his hips that are still snapping against Rick’s hand don’t let him pull away. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay…” he can hear Rick’s rough voice as he releases him. There’s a white spot on his chin. He wipes some off with the back of his hand and swallows what he doesn’t. His hand is on Daryl’s shoulder, squeezing. 

“Baby, it’s okay, I wanted it. I’m not mad.” He repeats it again, slower. 

Daryl lets out a shaky breath. He must look horrified to the other man. For a moment or two, he is.

He stops, altogether. His pelvis slows down, although he can feel himself still squeezing the fingers inside. 

Merle would go down on him occasionally — no shame in eating the pussy you’re fucking, right? — but there’s no way in hell Merle Dixon would allow another man’s juice to get anywhere near his face, uh-uh.

Merle would probably break Daryl’s jaw if it ever happened, knock out a loose tooth or two at least. 

He’s tempted to reflect on their brotherly love some more, but then there’s a mouth on his, hands around him, hard dick against his stomach. 

“You just came your brains out,” Rick says proudly, grinning like a maniac. 

Merle has nothing to say to that. 

And Daryl smiles back, simple as that, and it surprises him how easy it is to ignore the stinging at the corner of his eyes.

Then the magic moment is broken by Rick’s cock sliding along the length of his hip. 

“Do it,” Daryl whispers. It’s Rick’s turn to shake his head violently to bring the concentration back. He moves, and Daryl feels the wave of panic again, catching him by the shoulder. 

“Just don’t turn me over.” he licks his lips nervously and spreads his legs wider.

“Yeah.” 

It stings, and with sadistic satisfaction, Daryl notes that Rick tries to go slow, but he’s honestly unable to, his whole chivalry act be damned. 

He wraps both legs against the man’s waist, arms around his shoulders, and still dazed, blindsided by his sudden freedom he was just granted, he takes everything he has to give him. It’s his turn now to whisper in Rick’s ear how hot and how beautiful he is. 

It’s over very quickly, and Daryl wrestles to keep the man inside him when he comes, filling him. 

They lie, one atop of the other, for what seems like hours, and although he doesn’t want to drift on it, Daryl returns to the forest, into Carol’s arms many months ago when he doesn’t believe her when she tells him: “One day it just might be over.” 

He pokes around his head for his brother, all the dark corners covered in cobweb, mouse traps and shit, and Merle’s not there. 

He’ll be back soon enough, bickering and bitching, but this new distance between them is something Daryl can work with.


End file.
